The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ECMWF is seeking candidates to develop a probabilistic high-resolution regional data-driven modelling capability that can be flexibly configured for European domains. The invitation to tender, issued in the framework of the Destination Earth initiative of the European Commission (DestinE), is open until 16 March. 

The successful tenderer will develop a European probabilistic high-resolution regional data-driven modelling capability, that can be flexibly and rapidly deployed to predict extreme events over Europe and regions of European interest. This will build on the Anemoi ecosystem and existing European open-source machine learning and artificial intelligence-based models, such as ECMWF’s AIFS, MetNorway’s Bris or AICON from Germany’s Deutsche Wetterdienst (DWD).   

The regional ML capability will complement the physics-based simulations of the regional component of the DestinE Weather-Induced Extremes Digital Twin, developed by a strong partnership involving many meteorological services across Europe under the lead of Météo-France, in collaboration with ECMWF. This will strengthen European sovereignty and enhance preparedness efforts in Europe and beyond, while also supporting United Nations/ WMO’s Early Warning for All initiative. 

The developed data-driven capability should remain modular and adaptable, enabling users to customize AI solutions to regional priorities. Key priorities include optimizing AI model design, evaluating simulation realism to build trust in these new capabilities, defining fitness-for-purpose in a changing climate and for local application domains, as well as building scalable, efficient and interoperable ML model components on heterogeneous HPC and cloud infrastructures. 

Destination Earth’s AI and ML capabilities are developed in collaboration with a broad range of European initiatives seeking to advance Europe’s implementation of AI for weather and climate, including ECMWF and its Member States, as well as the EUMETNET E-AI initiative, the EU Commission’s AI Factories and relevant Horizon Europe projects in the domain, such as the WeatherGenerator.  

The contract will run during  Phase 3 of DestinE (June 2026 – June 2028), in which the focus of AI activities led by ECMWF together with its partners shifts to upgrading the ML Earth system components developed at present and coupling them with existing atmospheric ML models – such as ECMWF’s AIFS, to build an open-source ML-based Earth system model. Phase 3 activities will also focus on expanding the functionalities of the ML Earth system model, including through the development of the regional capability delivered through this contract. 

For more information, see the ITT call on ECMWF website. 

Destination Earth is a European Union funded initiative launched in 2022, with the aim to build a digital replica of the Earth system by 2030. The initiative is being jointly implemented by three entrusted entities: the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) responsible for the creation of the first two ‘digital twins’ and the ‘Digital Twin Engine’, the European Space Agency (ESA) responsible for building the ‘Core Service Platform’, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), responsible for the creation of the ‘Data Lake’.

We acknowledge the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking for awarding this project strategic access to the EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI, hosted by CSC (Finland) and the LUMI consortium, Marenostrum5, hosted by BSC (Spain) Leonardo, hosted by Cineca (Italy) and MeluXina, hosted by LuxProvide (Luxembourg) through a EuroHPC Special Access call. 

More information about Destination Earth is on the Destination Earth website and the EU Commission website.

For more information about ECMWF’s role visit ecmwf.int/DestinE

For any questions related to the role of ECMWF in Destination Earth, please use the following email links:

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